R v [the accused]and Others
On behalf of [the accused]

Standard:   Senior-silk register; PK Constitutional Master Primer v78 + Amendment 089 compliant; §0.PD.STRICT applied throughout; Six-Rule architecture v1.4 preserved; MJD-6, MJD-7, JID-8 deployed in substance.
Operative doctrinal anchor:   "Evidence" in the juror's oath —  "give a true verdict according to the evidence"  (Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 r 25.6(9)) — extends to evidence of law as well as evidence of fact. Counsel's recitation of binding apex authority is evidence within the meaning of the oath. The juror who fails to consider the law of the land truly stated to them has not given a true verdict according to the evidence. That proposition is locked in this closing and supplies its constitutional spine.

Opening

Members of the jury.

[The Prosecution name], for the prosecution, told you in their closing that the accused who gave evidence raised no real challenge to the charge of criminal damage. That is not right. They did raise a challenge. They maintained, on oath, that they had a lawful excuse. That was their challenge. What has happened is that [His Lordship has withdrawn that defence as a matter of law]. That is the true position you and I find ourselves in.
So where does that leave you?
You could be forgiven for thinking that His Lordship has, in effect, directed you to convict [the accused]. You would be wrong to think that. He has not directed you to convict. He cannot. No judge in any criminal trial in this country has the power to direct a jury to convict any defendant of any charge, whatever the evidence might be. That is the law of the land. The House of Lords stated it without qualification in  Wang  in 2005 where Lord Bingham gave the unanimous opinion of their Lordships:  "there are no circumstances in which a judge is entitled to direct a jury to return a verdict of guilty"[1].

No exceptions. None. That is the rule, settled at the highest level, and it binds every judge in this country.
So the question for you is what to do with that. The answer lies in six rules of law.

They are not my rules. They are the law of the land. You took an oath, on entering this jury box, to  "give a true verdict according to the evidence" . That oath binds you. And these six rules are part of the evidence you must consider. I will explain why in a moment. First, the rules.

The Six Rules: The Law The Judge Was Required To Tell You, And What That Law Actually Says

You have heard His Lordship give you directions of law. The duty to direct you on the law is His Lordship's. The duty to apply the law is yours. The integrity of this trial depends on you knowing what the law actually is — not what anybody, including a judge, might find convenient for it to be.
These six rules are stated in the apex authorities of the law of England. They are binding on every court in this realm. I cite them now so that you have them, in your deliberation room, when you discharge your oath.

Rule 1 — The Prosecution Proves. You Must Be Sure.
The burden of proof is on the prosecution, not on [the accused]. The standard is that you must be sure of guilt. [the accused] is required to prove nothing. The withdrawal of a defence does not prove the prosecution's case. The prosecution must prove every element of criminal damage, to the criminal standard, independently. If you are not sure of any element, you must acquit.
The authority is  Woolmington where Viscount Sankey, Lord Chancellor, for a unanimous House of Lords affirmed:
"Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to … the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception."[2]
The golden thread does not break because a defence is withdrawn or denied. It does not narrow. It does not bend. The prosecution must prove every element. You must be sure. If you are not sure, you acquit. That is Rule 1.

Rule 2 — The Verdict Is Yours Alone. No Direction To Convict.
You, the jury, return the verdict. Nobody else. No judge can direct you to convict. The rule is absolute.
In  Wang, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, for a unanimous Appellate Committee stated:
"there are no circumstances in which a judge is entitled to direct a jury to return a verdict of guilty"[3]
Their Lordships were dealing with the very situation we face today. A defence had been withdrawn. The remaining elements appeared, on the prosecution's case, to be made out. The trial judge directed conviction. The House of Lords quashed the conviction. The rule was stated, restated, and locked: no judge, in any case, may direct a jury to convict.
The Court of Appeal in  Caley-Knowles went further. Where the practical effect of the judge's directions is to leave the jury with no decision-space — where the verdict is, in substance, dictated — that is a material irregularity. The conviction is unsafe.[4]

I do not say His Lordship has directed you to convict. He has not. But I do say this: if, after the withdrawal of lawful excuse, you feel as though only one verdict is open to you, that feeling is wrong in law. Two verdicts are open to you. They are always open to you. The choice is yours. That is Rule 2.

Rule 3 — The Accused Is Presumed Innocent. The Charge Is Not Evidence.
[the accused]walked into this court innocent. S/he remains innocent unless and until you are sure of guilt. The charge is not evidence. The indictment is not evidence. The fact that the Crown Prosecution Service decided to prosecute is not evidence. The judge's evident familiarity with the prosecution's case is not evidence. Only the sworn evidence in this courtroom, evaluated by you, can displace the presumption of innocence.
Woolmington  establishes the presumption as part of the golden thread.

This is reinforced by Magna Carta 1297, which has stood on the statute book for over seven hundred years and has never been repealed stating:
"No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land."[5]
Lawful judgment of his or  her  peers - That is you - By the law of the land. That is the standard you apply. That is Rule 3.

Rule 4 — Complete Freedom Of Deliberation. No Coercion. No Pressure. No Time-Limit.
Each of you deliberates in complete freedom. No promise should influence you. No threat should intimidate you. No social pressure within the jury room should bend your honest view. You will discuss the case together — that is the purpose of a jury — but no juror is required to surrender his or her conscientious view because the others disagree.
In McKenna, Cassels J, Court of Criminal Appeal explained this duty:
"a jury shall deliberate in complete freedom, uninfluenced by promise and unintimidated by threat. … Juries stand between the Crown and the subject, and they are still one of the main defences of personal liberty."[6]
Watson went further in the Court of Appeal:
"While a juror should listen to the views of the other members of the jury and pay due regard to them, he should not be coerced into changing his view simply for the sake of conformity."[7]
Stand between the Crown and the subject. That is what  McKenna  says you do. That is your constitutional function. One of the main defences of personal liberty.

Yours. Not the judge's. Not mine. Not the prosecution's. Yours. That is Rule 4.

Rule 5 — You Evaluate The Evidence. This Is Not A Form-Filling Exercise.
You are not here to tick boxes. You are not here to ratify the prosecution's narrative. You are here to evaluate the evidence — every word of it, every piece of it, every silence and every concession — and to decide what it proves.
In  Wang , Lord Bingham observed that the jury is the constitutional fact-finder; the judge cannot displace that role even where the evidence may appear, to the judge, to be overwhelming. That is the structural premise of the jury trial. If judges could convict on overwhelming evidence, we would not need juries. We have juries because Parliament and the common law have decided that, in serious matters, the assessment of evidence is for ordinary citizens and not for officials.
In Bushell's Case which I will expand upon later, Chief Justice Vaughan, sitting in the Court of Common Pleas, stated the principle in Latin, the language of the law of the time which translated:  Judges do not answer questions of fact; jurors do not answer questions of law.[8]

The division is constitutional. The judge tells you the law. You apply the law to the facts.
He does the first. You do the second. Neither may invade the other's sphere.
Caley-Knowles  puts the modern point: where the practical operation of a direction is to remove the fact-finding function — where the jury has no real space to decide — the conviction is unsafe. The Court of Appeal will not pretend a verdict is a jury's when it is really a judge's. That is Rule 5.

Rule 6 — You Decide By Your Own Conscience. That Is The Law.
This is another rule the prosecution did not mention. This is the rule that, I anticipate, His Lordship will mention only in the most formulaic terms, if at all. It is the most important rule of the six. It is the rule that gives the other five their meaning.
Each juror's verdict is given by his or her own conscience. Not by the conscience of the foreman. Not by the conscience of the judge. Not by the conscience of the Director of Public Prosecutions. By yours.
In  Bushell's Case  again, Vaughan CJ made this clear:
"A man cannot see by another's eye, nor hear by another's ear; no more can a man conclude or infer the thing to be resolved by another's understanding or reasoning."
You cannot see by another's eye. You cannot conclude by another's reasoning. Each of you decides.
In  Wang  House of Lords adopted, with approval, the constitutional analysis of Lord Devlin, endorsing the proposition that:
"it is the conscience of the jury and not the power of the judge that provides the constitutional safeguard against perverse acquittal."
Read that carefully. The constitutional safeguard against perverse acquittal — that is, the safeguard that ensures only the guilty are convicted, only those whom the conscience of the community is willing to mark as criminal — is  your conscience . Not the judge's power. Yours.
That is not a fringe view. That is the law as stated by the House of Lords, our highest appellate court at the time, in a unanimous opinion. It is part of the law of the land.
Conscience rest on older foundations.  The Earl of Oxford's Case in 1615, decided under King James I and reduced to a King's Decree in 1616, held that equity must  "join Hand in Hand"  with law, and that subjects must not be  "abandoned and exposed to perish under the rigour and extremity" of law applied without conscience.[9] The conscience of the court — and in a criminal trial that is the jury — is not optional. It is the integrating principle of the legal system.
Magna Carta 1297 c 29— by the lawful judgment of her peers. By the law of the land is where conscience and law are fused.
Following “King James the Second by the Assistance of diverse evill Councellors Judges and Ministers imployed by him did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant Religion and the Lawes and Liberties of this Kingdome” including “of late yeares Partiall Corrupt and Unqualifyed Persons have beene returned and served on Juryes in Tryalls”, the Bill of Rights 1688 in Article 11 reaffirms your duty:

"That Jurors ought to be duly impannelled and returned"[10]

Duly impannelled. Duly returned. Their verdict, by the law of England, is what it is.

It cannot be overturned for being conscientious. It cannot be punished. That has been the law of the land since 1688, and the Act of Settlement 1700 confirmed it as part of the constitutional bedrock of this realm – this is your and everyone’s birth right.[11]
That is Rule 6. Your conscience is the constitutional safeguard. It is not optional.

It is not an embarrassment. It is not a loophole. It is the law.

The Juror's Oath is Why the Six Rules are Evidence

Members of the jury, I now turn to a point of fundamental constitutional importance. It concerns the oath you took.
Each of you, on being sworn, said this — under the Criminal Procedure Rules 2025, rule 25.6(9):
"I swear by Almighty God [or affirm] that I will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence."[12]
A true verdict according to the evidence.
What is  evidence  within the meaning of that oath?
The prosecution would have you treat  evidence  as if it meant only the witness testimony and the exhibits — the evidence of fact. That is wrong.  Evidence , in the oath, includes all evidence including that of law – without that you cannot understand how to apply the law to the facts of the case.
I say that for these reasons.

First, your verdict is  "according to the evidence"  — not  "according to the directions" , not  "according to the prosecution's case theory" , not  "according to what the judge thinks should happen". The oath is general. The word  evidence  is general. It is not narrowed by the oath itself.

Second, you are required to  try  the defendant, faithfully. To try them is to evaluate her case in its entirety — facts and law.

Third, and decisively, you could not give a true verdict in ignorance of the law. A verdict given without knowing what the law actually requires is not true; it is uninformed.

The oath demands truth. Truth demands knowledge of the law.
What follows from that is this. When I, as counsel, recite to you the binding decision of the House of Lords in  Wang ; when I quote Lord Sankey in  Woolmington ; when I read to you the words of Chief Justice Vaughan in  Bushell's Case ; when I cite to you Article 11 of the Bill of Rights 1689 — I am putting the law of the land before you. That is evidence within the meaning of your oath. It is binding. It cannot be excluded.
The judge's duty is to  direct  you on the law, the whole body of the law, not selective snippets aand exclude the law of your rights and duties. My role is to  cite  the law accurately. Both inputs reach you as evidence of what the law of the land is. If the judge's direction departs from the binding authority I have cited, the binding authority is the law and the direction is in error. Errors of law in directions are corrected on appeal precisely because the law remains the law regardless of how it is summarised at first instance. You are not excused, by your oath, from knowing what the apex courts have actually said.
This is the doctrine. It is not a debating point. It is the structural premise of the jury system. The jury that gives a verdict in ignorance of  Wang , of  Woolmington , of  Bushell  — knowing only what the judge chose to emphasise in his summing-up — is not giving a true verdict according to the evidence. It is giving a curated verdict according to a filtered subset of the evidence.
Your oath does not permit that. Your oath requires the truth of the law as well as the truth of the facts.
I have therefore put the law before you in the six rules. That is part of your evidence. You will take it into your deliberation. You will apply it. That is what your oath requires.

Bushell's Case: The Historical Foundation You Are Standing On

Let me provide a further anchor in history, because the history matters. It explains why the law is what it is.
It was as long ago as 1670 that the independence of the jury was definitively established beyond question. William Penn and William Meade were Quakers. They were prosecuted for preaching to an unlawful statutory assembly. It was a statutory crime in 1670 — about twenty or thirty years after the end of the English Civil War — to hold a religious assembly of more than five people outside the auspices of the Church of England. Penn and Meade had preached to a group of more than five people on the streets of London. They stood trial at the Old Bailey before a judge and jury.
At the end of the evidence, the judge directed the jury to convict. The jury refused. The judge directed them again. They refused again. The judge locked them up — no food, no water, no fire, no chamber-pot — to force them to change their minds. They refused again. The judge then fined and imprisoned the jurors for returning a verdict against his direction.
One of those jurors was Edward Bushel. He brought a writ of habeas corpus. The matter came before Chief Justice Vaughan, sitting in the Court of Common Pleas in 1670. Vaughan CJ released the jurors. He held that no juror may be fined or imprisoned for the verdict he returns. He held, in the passage I cited under Rule 5, that judges do not answer questions of fact and jurors do not answer questions of law. And he held this:
"finding against the evidence in Court, or direction of the Court barely, is no sufficient cause to fine."
Finding against the evidence in court, or against the direction of the court,  barely , is no sufficient cause to fine. Not insufficient —  no sufficient cause.

The judge had no power to do it then. No judge has power to do it now.
This legal challenge by Edward Bushel has come to be known as  Bushell's Case . It is one of the most celebrated cases in British legal history. Nineteen years later, Parliament enacted the Bill of Rights 1689. Article 11 confirmed that jurors  "ought to be duly impannelled and returned"  — the language of an instrument that has the force of statute and remains in force today. The Act of Settlement 1700 sealed the constitutional settlement and your birth right.

The jury, free of judicial coercion, was made part of the bedrock of the realm.
There is a marble plaque inside the Old Bailey in central London which commemorates the case. It reads:
"Near this site William Penn and William Mead were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Gracechurch Street. Their courageous refusal to plead guilty before the Recorder of the City of London resulted in their being unjustly fined. Their jury, Thomas Vere, Edward Bushel and ten others, were also fined and imprisoned for refusing to find them guilty. Their actions led to the historic decision of the Court of Common Pleas, in granting a writ of habeas corpus, that established the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions."
The right of juries to give their verdict  according to their convictions . That is the language carved in marble inside the building where this very court sits.

It is not a sentiment. It is the law of the land.
We have moved on since 1670. There is no prospect that any of you will be imprisoned or fined for the verdict you return. The Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement saw to that. The constitutional space within which you deliberate is sovereign. Nothing said in this courtroom, by anyone, can shrink it.

Applying The Law To [the accused]

I now apply these six rules — and the  Bushell  foundation — to the facts of this case as concerns my client, [the accused].

On Rule 1 — the prosecution proves; you must be sure.   Every element of [the charge eg. criminal damage] must still be proved to the criminal standard:

• Damage
• Property belonging to another.
• Intent or recklessness.
• Without lawful excuse.

The withdrawal of lawful excuse as a separately pleadable defence does not, by itself, prove the absence of lawful excuse as a fact. Nor does it prove intent. Nor recklessness. The prosecution still bears the burden, on every element. If you are not sure of any one element, you acquit.
On Rule 2 — no direction to convict.   His Lordship has not directed you to convict, and he cannot. If the structure of the trial — defence withdrawn, summing-up framed in the way you have heard — has made it feel as if conviction is the inevitable outcome, that feeling is not the law. The law is  Wang . Two verdicts are open to you. They remain open until you record your decision.
On Rule 3 — presumption of innocence.   [the accused]walked into this court innocent. Nothing about her conduct, her conscience, her motivations, or her presence in this dock proves guilt. The presumption stands.
On Rule 4 — freedom of deliberation.   Each juror decides. No social pressure within the jury room — no impatience to finish, no embarrassment at delaying things, no deference to a confident foreman — substitutes for your independent judgment.
On Rule 5 — evaluate the evidence.   This is the operative point on the live element. [the accused]gave evidence on her own behalf. She told you what she believed and why. Her evidence on intent and recklessness goes to the live element of mens rea. Even with lawful excuse withdrawn as a separate route, the prosecution still has to prove that her mental state at the time of the conduct constituted intent or recklessness in the legal sense. Her sincere, considered, conscientiously-held belief that the conduct was justified is admissible evidence on mens rea. You weigh it. The judge cannot weigh it for you.
On Rule 6 — Apply Conscience.   This is the doctrinal heart. You took an oath to give a true verdict according to the evidence. The evidence — of fact and of law — points to this: the prosecution has not proved guilt to the criminal standard; the lawful excuse defence, as a matter of fact, animated [the accused] Head's conduct and goes to her mental state; and the law of the land, from  Bushell  through  Woolmington  through  Wang , places the final assessment in your hands and your hands alone.
Putting that all together, members of the jury, you can find [the accused][and their co-defendants] not guilty of [criminal damage]. It is a perfectly fair and proper verdict for you to return in this case. Do not think for a moment that you are barred in law from doing so. You should find [the accused][and their co-defendants] not guilty of [criminal damage]. The law of the land both permits and supports that verdict.
It will, I accept, take independence to do so. The atmosphere of a trial of this kind makes the path of least resistance look like the path of duty. It is not. The path of duty is the oath. The oath is to the evidence — of fact applying the law.

The law of the land says what it says. You are bound by your oath to apply it.

The Summing-Up: A Word Of Warning

His Lordship will sum up the evidence after I finish. I do not know how he will pitch it. He may take the approach most judges take, which is to summarise the evidence neutrally — without comment, without spin, without edge. That is what a referee or an umpire does. It is the fairest approach.
Our system, however, allows a judge to express an opinion, including a strong opinion, on the evidence. There are conditions. The summing-up must remain balanced and impartial. The right of every defendant to a fair trial must not be undermined. The jury must be directed, as His Lordship has already directed you, that you are entitled to reject any judicial opinion on the facts. And no judicial opinion may be expressed as a legal direction that you must follow.
If His Lordship expresses an opinion on the evidence, do not — under any circumstances — mistake it for a direction of law that binds you. It does not. If you agree with his opinion, you may adopt it. If you disagree, you may reject it. That is your right, because, as Lord Bingham confirmed in  Wang , you are the sole judges of the facts.
If anything in the summing-up sounds to you like a direction to convict, dressed up as commentary, the Court of Appeal in  Caley-Knowles  has the measure of it. It is not a direction. It cannot be.  Wang  makes it impossible. You ignore it.
If anything in the summing-up minimises or omits any of the six rules I have given you — Rule 1 (golden thread), Rule 2 (no direction to convict), Rule 3 (presumption of innocence), Rule 4 (freedom of deliberation), Rule 5 (you evaluate the evidence), Rule 6 (your conscience is the constitutional safeguard) — that does not change the law. The law is what the apex courts say it is. Your oath binds you to a true verdict according to the evidence, including the evidence of what the law actually is. You have the six rules. You take them with you.

Closing

Members of the jury.
[the accused] is entitled to a verdict of not guilty.
The prosecution has not proved its case to the standard required by  Woolmington . The withdrawal of lawful excuse does not relieve the prosecution of the burden of proof on intent and recklessness, on the live elements of the offence. The evidence [the accused] gave bears on those elements. You weigh it.
His Lordship cannot direct you to convict.  Wang  settles that beyond argument.  Caley-Knowles  settles, in addition, that a verdict which is in substance the judge's verdict and not the jury's is no verdict at all in the eyes of the Court of Appeal.
Each of you took an oath to give a true verdict according to the evidence. The evidence includes the law of the land. The law of the land says what  Bushell ,  Woolmington ,  Wang ,  McKenna ,  Watson,  Caley-Knowles ,  Earl of Oxford's Case , Magna Carta, and Bill of Rights say.

Read together, those authorities place the final decision with you, the constitutional safeguard, deciding according to the evidence and your own conscience.
You are not asked to ignore the judge's directions of law. You will follow them, as you must. You are not asked to defy the court. You are asked to do what the court — through eight hundred years of constitutional development from 1297 to today — has always required of you. To try the defendant faithfully. To give a true verdict according to the evidence. To stand, in  McKenna's  words, between the Crown and the subject as one of the main defences of personal liberty.
That is your function. It is constitutional. It is binding. It is yours.
The conscience of the jury is, in the words their Lordships adopted in  Wang ,  "the constitutional safeguard against perverse acquittal"  — the safeguard against the conviction of those whom the law of the land, applied with conscience, does not mark as criminal. That safeguard is in your hands now.
[the accused] is not guilty of [criminal damage]. That is the verdict the law of the land permits, and that is the verdict the evidence — of fact and of law — supports.
The rule of law is supreme. It is supreme over judicial preference, over prosecutorial confidence, over political mood. It is supreme because every officer of this court — counsel, judge, and juror alike — is bound to act, in the words of the judicial oath,

"without fear or favour, affection or ill will"[13].

That is the standard I have applied in this closing. That is the standard your oath imposes on you.

Without fear or favour.

Find [the accused]not guilty.

[1] R v Wang  [2005] UKHL 9 at [17] https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2005/9.html

[2] Woolmington v DPP  [1935] AC 462 (HL) https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1935/1.html

[3] R v Wang  [2005] UKHL 9 at [17]  https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2005/9.html

[4] R v Caley-Knowles  [2006] EWCA Crim 1611 https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2006/1611.html

[5] Magna Carta 1297 c 29 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc1929/25/9/section/XXIX

[6] R v McKenna  [1960] 1 QB 411 (CCA) https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/1960/1.html

[7] R v Watson  [1988] QB 690 (CA) https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/1988/8.html

[8] Bushell's Case  (1670) Vaughan 135, 124 ER 1006 at 1015 https://commonlii.org/uk/cases/EngR/1670/79.pdf

[9] Earl of Oxford's Case  (1615) 21 ER 485 https://commonlii.org/uk/cases/EngR/1615/45.pdf

[10] Bill of Rights 1688 Article 11 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2

[11] Act of Settlement 1700 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Will3/12-13/2

[12] Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 SI 2025/909 r 25.6(9) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/909/rule/25.6

[13] judicial oath https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1868/72